I don’t like tea and there’s no crumpets in Japan but this is how I feel.
I am gloriously lacking drive. For as long as I can remember I have been the single most motivated person around. Nothing would ever satisfy. I would go from one project to the next, driving and forcing and excelling and defeating, always having 15 irons in the fire just so that I never felt the agony of sitting still and allowing myself to be.
And now…
Nothing. It’s gone. I am relaxed, in the most real and pure way I have ever known. I did my errands this morning and had lunch with my wife and drove past the angry dogman and… nothing. I just… whatever is, it is enough. I don’t feel the need to change things and fix the world and be someone else or something better any more.
This might not sound like a good thing to anyone who is not like me, but for people like me… you have no idea. The ability to *not* do things is such an incredible liberation that words do not suffice. The deep muscle tissue near the bones is releasing and my vertebrae feel like they're on cushions of air.
I am able to sit and be engaged with my kids and my wife, but I am also able to sit and allow them to be engaged with their own things and not interfere. I’m able to go for a nap and not set an alarm, because what do I have to do that’s so pressing any way?
This is the real reason why arahants don’t teach: they can’t be bothered.
Ha.
Seriously though… I am happy that I built this habit of writing here or I would just be sat drinking my decaf and going for the odd walk, eating my ice cream and meditating for pleasure. Watching these leaves fall from the tree as the season ramps up for snow.
The neurosis is gone. It is amazing. And almost all of you will be like ‘what? why would you want to be *less* motivated?’
But then most of you look at buddhism and you’re like, ‘that sounds depressing; all this talk of suffering’. It’s because your lives have not had the arc of mine, or that of Siddartha’s. Maybe the 5-10% of us who are drawn to buddhist philosophy are the dysregulated few; those now branded adhd or asd. Maybe we just have lives with more inherent suffering than most.
This would make sense. We try everything. We do all the drugs, we chase all the lanterns, we build the companies and do the research and make the masterpieces and conquer the world and we are left empty and broken and often end up checking out early because nothing can fill the ever-growing void.
… apart from this.
The void has gone. Get me a coffee and a scone :)
Seriously all this talk of arahants not liking sense pleasures is short-sighted. Arahants do not *crave*. That is the key.
For me, craving meant controlling my diet to a tee and ensuring that I was the fastest on the bike and the quickest out of transition. For me, *not craving* means allowing that ice cream. By the end, discipline itself was my addiction; long ago had I upgraded from the simplistic ‘sense pleasures’ that everyone bleats on about.
But wasn’t Siddhartha the same? Didn’t he start with the pleasures and see them for empty, then go the other way and find that empty too? Wasn’t he on the brink of death through ascetic pursuits when he was given that bowl of rice and thought ‘fuck this fucking shit’ and sat under that tree and programmed his brain so he craved neither one nor the other? When he initiated the [bodhitree-protocol] and spent 12 hours rinsing and repeating his hot bath - cold plunge - meditation insight cycle?
All these folks saying it’s just about sense-pleasures probably haven’t burned the other end of the candle. They are in the process of doing their 30 years of sitting and disciplining and learning that this is not the way either.
Everyone is so quick to forget that Sid taught the Middle Way.
Neither extreme.
Maybe they have only experienced one side, and maybe their definition of extreme is not as extreme as Sid and I. Maybe all the perfectionism and workaholism and training to world-class athleticism was part of my path.
Maybe this is why it all unravelled so quickly once I started peeling it apart. I was primed to see both ways as unsatisfactory.
Who knows. All I know is that I’m at peace. I have normal human emotions and am happy I can meditate again; those microcessations are something else when it comes to flushing the mind. Man they’re so nice.
I will also reinstate guanfacine because my neurological makeup is one of laying cables and guanfacine has the impact of increasing neuroplasticity. But I don’t *need* it. I can do the meditation without it, I have just always liked to optimise things. [edit: guanfacine seemed to lower the incidence of micro-cessations so I will cease it; my priority now is pruning, not curating]
As I said, I don’t know if there is an end to this rabbithole. Arahants continue meditating, and as a neo-arahant I can choose the route I take.
The body and mind still have their conditioning. The neurosis and trauma is gone. The face is relaxed and the mind is unbound.
There’s no better place to draw than on a blank slate. Now I’ve torn it all down maybe I can work on that vista I always dreamed of.
Tea and crumpets indeed.
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